Thursday, 26 June 2014

Spitalfields Summer Festival: Death Actually

Discussing death and life with Thomas
Guthrie and friends in Toynbee
Studios.Spitalfields Music, which runs the
biannual Spitalfields
Festival, means more than just the festival to the
community. It puts on 250 workshops a year, with around 6,500
participants (mostly from London Borough of Tower Hamlets). But it is
perhaps the summer and winter festivals that it is most famous for.
The summer festival is heading towards is close – but I have had a
great time experiencing classical and contemporary music in some
unusual venues throughout the East End.

Tonight's concert (Saturday 21
June) was organised by Guthrie whose hand could be seen in every
single work performed. In association with his opera group GOTcompany
and the Sarah
Dowling Dance Company he wanted to develop a programme
that “Celebrates the ritual surrounding death” and that would
leave the audience feeling “How wonderful it is to be alive”.

And indeed this is exactly what the
performers achieved.

Tonight's journey began with Franz
Schubert's (1797-1828) 'Die schöne Müllerin',
sung by tenor Robert
Murray, accompanied by Johan
Lofving, on guitar, and members of Barokksolistene.
In this 'Liederspiel' (lyrics by Wilhelm
Müller a contemporary of Schubert who also wrote the
poem 'Die Winterreise') a young boy falls in love with a girl,
the pretty millermaid. But, when a rival for her attentions catches
her eye, the boy kills himself out of despair for love.

Murray was perfectly cast as the boy -
his singing was dramatic and heartfelt, and Guthrie's arrangement
of Schubert's picture painting accompaniment was delicately done.
The guitar played by Lofving took the lead, but interjections by the
other instrumentalists and percussion added to the scenery. Even a
leafy branch was rattled to produce the effect of a gentle breeze and
a spotlight became the moon when night fell.

Here you felt that you were at a
travelling theatre show, a feeling enhanced by the use of the puppet
(for the boy) operated by Murray. Additionally there were some comic
moments, with the puppet staring at latecomers, and little asides
between the puppet and Murray. But behind the puppet you could still
see Murray, and the emotion in his face and body, providing a double
layer to his performance.

After the death came a funeral, at
which were sung the motets 'Komm, Jesu, Komm', 'Jesu, meine
Freude', and 'Singet dem Herr nein neues Lied' composed by
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). This part of the evening was also
theatrical, because as Guthrie explained, “I am staging the Bach
motets because I feel that singing is a physical activity, and if you
really physicalise the singing, the ideas, the text, you extend what
the music can do.”

Picture credit: Simon Wall, Tall Wall Media

Tensely the set began in pitch black
and people sombrely aggregated on stage while Guthrie sang the
traditional song 'Hang me, oh hang me'. Then the lights came up
on the singers - Gillian Keith and Elin Manahan Thomas (soprano),
Sofie Almroth and Clare Wilkinson (mezzo-soprano), Sam Boden and
Robert Murray (tenor), and Jakob Bloch Jespersen and Matthew Brook
(baritone). Again accompanied by members of Barokksolistene for their
performance of the Bach.

Throughout the motets the singers
walked around, collapsed to the floor, took off clothes, and carried
around boxes (symbolic coffins?), candles and folded palls. The
description does not do it any justice, because these simple actions
provided a strong feeling of grief and despair that most performances
of the motets do not have.

Between the first two motets Gutrhie
also sang 'Oh let us howl' originally written by Robert
Johnson in 1613 setting words from 'The Duchess of
Malfi' by John
Webster.

Finally the wake - 'An Alehouse
Session' set in the 17th century, led by Bjarte
Eike on violin, where Barokksolistene got to let their
hair down. Here, the irreverently used, Coridon and Mopsa's duet
'No kissing at all' from Henry
Purcell's (1659-1695) Fairy Queen and Boudica's
daughter's song from 'Bonduca, or the British Heroine', 'Lead
me to some peaceful gloom' also by Purcell, and his last major
work, were separated by other 17th tunes, folk tunes, a
bit of jazz, and some improvisations.

Picture credit: Simon Wall, Tall Wall Media

There was lots of audience
participation to be enjoyed and much jigging around to the infectious
cheerfulness of the performance.

I should also mention that as part of
the experience, before the concert, I attended a 'Death
Cafe', a 'social franchise', where 'people, often
strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death', which
was set up by the concert organisers. Here a handful of people came
together to talk about their experiences with talking about death and
how the people they love felt about being forced to have the
discussion.
'Death Actually' was one of the closing concerts of the Festival
– and what a way to go. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will be looking
out for what GOTcompany do next.

Quickening:

Songs by Robert Hugill to texts by English and Welsh poets now available from Amazon

four delicate, sensitive settings of Ivor Gurney, drawing performances of like quality. - it is Rosalind Ventris’s viola, weaving its way around and between the voice and William Vann’s piano, that is most beguilingGramphone magazine Jan 2018